The present invention relates to printed media documents with electronic links to related, electronic information.
Electronic publishing is well known today. An enormous amount of content, including documents, books and other types of publications are now accessible to users of personal computers or specialized e-book readers, via the WWW or CD ROM. Nevertheless, some people prefer the feeling and ease of reading a tangible newspaper, magazine or book.
Hyperlinks on web pages are well known today where a user can “click on” an icon, and in response, the web browser will fetch and display another web page linked to the icon. It was also known to define hyperlink active regions in a web page as rectangles, circles, and polygons, and associate them with a hyperlink address. They enable selected areas of a digital image (e.g., a GIF or JEPG image file) to be made “clickable” (i.e., active) so that a user can navigate from the web page containing the image to a number of other web pages or files, depending on which part of the image is selected. To create an imagemap, three things are required: an image, a database that relates each active region within the image to a hypertext reference, and a method of associating the database with the image.
US patent application 20020087598 entitled “Method and system for accessing interactive multimedia information or services by touching highlighted items on physical documents” was filed on Apr. 25, 2001 and published on Jul. 4, 2002. It discloses a system and method for manually selecting and electronically accessing multimedia information and/or services located on a user workstation or on one or a plurality of servers connected to a communication network. To make a selection, a person touches his or her finger to a word, letter, symbol, picture, icon, etc. that is electronically illuminated on the surface of a hard-copy document or any other physical surface. These illumination items are illuminated by a luminous signal (or light spot) generated by a transparent opto-touch foil, operating under the control of a user workstation. These illumination items act like hyperlinks. When the user selects one of the illuminated items, the user workstation receives from the opto-touch foil a signal indicating the position of the selected item. Then, the user workstation identifies and locates, by reference to a hyperlink table, the information and/or the service associated with the selected item. If the information and/or service is located in a remote server, the user workstation sends a request to this server for the information and/or service. If the information and/or the service is stored in the user workstation, then this information and/or service is accessed locally. The user workstation then displays the information or provides the requested service.
In US patent application 20020087598, the hyperlinked items are identified by the user as discrete illuminated points (light spots) emitted by the transparent opto-touch foil placed over the document. When the user touches the foil, a “minimum distance” algorithm is used to identify the hyperlink item selected by the user. According to the minimum distance algorithm, the distance from the coordinates of the point pressed by the user on the opto-touch foil is compared to the coordinates of all hyperlinked items (i.e., assimilated to illuminated points) defined on the document. The hyperlink item closest to the point that was pressed is the one deemed selected and triggered. Each hyperlink item (light spot) is a associated with a unique hyperlink destination (i.e., with a single URL) giving access to a single multimedia information or service related with the selected item.
The system disclosed in US patent application 20020087598 may have difficulty discriminating between touch points adjacent to closely spaced hyperlink items. Also, the appearance of the illuminated spots on the transparent foil over the document may mask, to some degree, the print seen by the user. Also, the use of a light spot as the hyperlink item does not always convey the subject matter of the hyperlinked information.
An object of the present invention is to create and utilize indicia of active regions on a printed document in such a way as to facilitate user selection of an active region.
Another object of the present invention is to create and utilize indicia of active regions on a printed document in such as a way as not to mask the document.
Another object of the present invention is to create and utilize indicia of active regions on a printed document in such a way as to more readily convey the subject matter of the hyperlinked information.
Another object of the present invention is to create and utilize indicia of active regions on a printed document in such as a way as to show the hyperlinked information related to an active region selected by the user.